Year of the Rat

So concludes Cyrus Grant’s adventures (for now?)… I had a blast writing The Chicago Rat Shifter. This afterword is a behind-the-scenes look at how this series came to be and some fun facts. The Chicago Rat ShifterInspiration for the Series Inspiration for the SeriesAll of my series begin with a mix of weird, seemingly unrelated inspirations. (1) A killer song lyric (1) A killer song lyricA single song lyric inspired this entire series when I first heard it in 2019. It’s from “Apartment”, a song by The Free Nationals featuring Benny Sings on vocals, from the Free Nationals’ self-titled debut album (which was my favorite R&B album of that year). The opening lyric to the song is “It was a long and sad goodbye / but now it’s time to pick up the pieces / I have to leave my sister’s couch today…” The song is about a guy who is looking for an apartment after a bad breakup, sleeping on his sister’s couch, and wanting to rebuild his life. That describes Cyrus Grant exactly when we first meet him in Dead Rat Walking. (The final scene in Year of the Rat brings everything full circle. He finally finds that apartment, and it’s everything he could have dreamed of. He’s a lot more mature too.) Dead Rat Walking. Year of the Rat(2) frustration finding a book to read (2) frustration finding a book to readThe idea to make Cyrus a rat shifter came one day after I was looking for some urban fantasy to read, but I kept stumbling across shifter romance novels. I enjoy romance novels, but I’ve always thought the shifter stuff is a little over the top. Especially the book covers. I came up with the idea for a rat shifter as a tongue-in-cheek response to all the wolves, lions, tigers, and bear shifters out there. I wrote the book that would have interested me on that lazy afternoon: a non-romantic shifter story where the main character is not an alpha, and is a different kind of animal. But…why rats? (3) an unforgettable Chicago memory (3) an unforgettable Chicago memoryYears ago, my wife and I visited a friend in Chicago. She lived in Bucktown, which is a trendy neighborhood on the northwest side, not too far from Logan Square. One night, we were walking to dinner at dusk and we had to pass through the alley behind her condo. The ground was crawling with rats. They swarmed the dumpsters for food, and there were so many of them that they didn’t care about the humans passing by. I had to give my wife a piggyback ride through alley. She was terrified of the rodents. I was fascinated. A few years later, we traveled to New York City for the first time. My wife was nervous about seeing rats again, but we didn’t see a single rat. In fact, we saw more rats in Chicago than we ever saw in New York City. That always stuck with me. My stories always start with what-if questions. “What if there was such a thing as a rat shifter? How could something like that happen? Who in their right mind would choose to become a rat? What if they were turned into a rat against their will instead?” chooseAfter that, the story took care of itself. So, in summary, this series came into being because: 1. an old memory (2015) 2. a browsing session on sss that went nowhere, and (2018) 3. A song lyric that described a character that intrigued me (2019) It’s funny how ideas mix over time and become fully-fledged series. Once I heard “Apartment”, everything fell into place. Once I wrote Chapter 3 of Dead Rat Walking (the chapter where Becca sits Cyrus down, tells him to get a job, and that she’s kicking him out of her apartment), the story and the characters became clear to me. Dead Rat WalkingThe City of Chicago The City of ChicagoI have always believed that the city is a character in urban fantasy. I wanted to make Chicago feel real and lived in. I’ve spent a decent amount in Chicago. It’s only a few hours away from Des Moines, Iowa where I live, and I used to travel there extensively for work. I spent most of my time in northwest Chicago and downtown, so that’s why I set the series there. I also set each book in the series with excerpts from the wonderful poetry of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. His poems embody America in the 1800s, and Masters lived in Chicago and set his poetry in Illinois. Spoon River Anthology. Chicago is a city with an amazing history. It is an architectural wonder; the fact that it exists at all is something people don’t often think about. The area is a low-lying swamp. Engineers raised the city between four and fourteen feet on jackscrews to avoid many of the issues living in a swamp creates (health problems, flooding, and so on). When you walk in downtown Chicago, there’s an entire history below your feet that you can’t see. In the late 1800s, a company built underground freight tunnels to transport freight, supplies, and garbage between buildings downtown. Those tunnels fell out of use and flooded in 1992 during a construction accident, causing all sorts of hell in the city. So, if there were paranormals living underground, these freight tunnels would be a great place for them to inhabit—much like the Midwest Gnome Clan. They were directly inspired by stories of these tunnels. There are so many great pieces of history in Chicago that are fodder for fiction. If you’ve never been to Chicago, I hope that this series will make you want to visit there someday. I am especially grateful to a group of Chicago-native beta readers who gave me some pointers on how I portrayed the city, particularly Logan Square and the L system details. They helped me with a lot of the little everyday details that I hope helped the city feel lived-in. Cyrus and Becca Cyrus and BeccaCyrus’s story is a coming-of-age story. It’s not a teenage coming of age story, but instead a journey into mature adulthood. Through a series of poor decisions, he ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he gets turned into a rat. The series is about him adapting to life as a shifter and learning how to live his new life despite a permanent change in his life that he didn’t ask for. And yet, he learns to thrive, with his best life ahead of him. That’s such a great metaphor for life in general. Becca’s story is a story of trauma in Rat City and Year of the Rat. Unlike Cyrus, she’s already got her life figured out, but through a series of bad decisions in Rat City, she ends up possessed by a demon. Becca’s story for me was about learning how to live with trauma. Just before I wrote Year of the Rat, my wife contracted COVID-19 and suffered a serious chronic complication as a result, one that has changed the course of her life forever. I tapped into those feelings of dread and sadness when I wrote this novel. Rat City Year of the Rat. Rat CityYear of the RatWhen I wrote this series, I knew that while it was Cyrus’s story, that his relationship with his sister would be central to the plot. No matter what, they stick together. Rats RatsRats are fascinating animals, and I spent dozens of hours learning about them. I consulted a rodent biologist when writing this series. He studied rats and spent a lot of time with them. He helped me get the rodent biology parts right. He helped me add a lot of little touches here and there that I hope made the rat scenes more memorable and vivid. The final battle in Dead Rat Walking between Cyrus and Thurston as rats was inspired by a famous painting by John James Audubon called “Black Rat.” It depicts two rats in a bird’s nest fighting over an egg. Cyrus and Thurston are fighting on a tree branch as the fae world is collapsing around them. Dead Rat WalkingThe scene in Rat City where Cyrus shifts into a rat on top of Gilberto’s church and ventures across a telephone wire and down the neighboring building to spy on Aidankirk but encounters Bruce MacLeod’s spirit was another scene that drew from a lot of biological research and stories about rats. Rat CityVillains VillainsThis series differs from others that I have written in that the villains are very prominent. In fact, when I wrote this series, I considered it to be a study in villains. That’s why every book features the main villain as a point-of-view character. In Dead Rat Walking, I had a lot of fun with Atticus Thurston and exploring how someone so brilliant could be corrupted and seduced into evil. Murgalen was inspired by reading fae lore. Dead Rat WalkingIn Rat City, I spent time inside the head of Aidankirk, and how two brothers could be so evil and yet likable at the same time. In some ways, Kirk’s story in Year of the Rat is similar to Cyrus’s—he’d do anything to get his brother and father back. Some of the rules of necromancy are explored further in my other urban fantasy series The Good Necromancer. If you liked the necromancy in The Chicago Rat Shifter, you’ll love it in The Good Necromancer. Rat CityYear of the RatThe Good NecromancerThe Chicago Rat ShifterThe Good Necromancer.In Year of the Rat, I had a blast with JoJo. The character was inspired by and takes his name from a song called “JoJo” by Boz Scaggs on his Middle Man album. If you read the lyrics of the song, you’ll understand. The opening lyric in that song is “Look out behind you / JoJo’s got his gun…” When JoJo draws his gun on Barry in the first chapter we meet him, that’s an homage to the lyric. And of course, JoJo’s mink coat is also a call back to that song. Year of the Rat,Middle ManI thought it would be fun to explore a character like JoJo. He’s unique in my villain rogues gallery, and I haven’t written a villain quite like him—a mink-wearing demon collector who stores his demons in the bodies of willing servants in exchange for favors. Yep, that’s definitely a fun villain to explore. JoJo’s girlfriend Simone is named after another song on the Middle Man album. Middle ManOriginally, JoJo and Simone were going to die, but as I made it further into the story, it was clear to me that they had to survive. JoJo is the kind of guy who goes bump in the night. If there is such a thing as a paranormal world with a seedy underbelly, it would be filled with hardscrabble types like JoJo and Simone. While Cyrus and Becca got the happy ending they deserved, JoJo and Simone are reminders that there is always evil in the world, and it always lives to laugh another day. And, whether we accept it or not, it is sometimes stronger than good. Catalina Parva was inspired after observing a married couple in an airport while I was traveling just before I wrote this novel. I was sitting near this married couple in the airport who was not comfortable with each other. They were extremely formal, asking each other’s permission for everything. (“Honey, is it okay if I leave my bag in this chair next to you while I go to the restroom?”) There was something odd about that couple that I couldn’t put my finger on. Then I had a weird thought: what if they weren’t actually married, and the whole thing was a ruse? Then, Catalina was born. Final Thoughts Final ThoughtsI wrote this entire series “into the dark”, meaning I had no idea what would happen. When you first met Cyrus in the sewer, fighting for his life, that was the first time I met him too. I wrote this entire series on the seat of my pants with only a small idea of what was to come. I don’t write story outlines like most authors. I just make it up as I go. It’s a lot more fun that way, and if I’m having fun, my hope is that you will be too. Whatever life experiences I’m dealing with at the time make their way into my stories. For example, me being in the airport and encountering that awkward married couple happened only a few days before I wrote Kirk’s first chapter in Year of the Rat. I had no idea who was going to be waiting for Kirk in his hotel room. Then I remembered that couple in the airport. A few minutes and mental gymnastics later, I wrote a beautiful woman with a gun and skull sitting in Kirk’s room. I just followed my fingers and trusted my subconscious to do something intriguing. Year of the RatThis entire series (and my fiction writing) is filled with little examples like this. My novels are a chronicle of my everyday experiences in this regard. I hope The Chicago Rat Shifter was as much of a rollercoaster ride for you as it was for me. It is an honor for me that you made it this far, and I would be honored if you turned the page and joined me in one of my other fictional worlds. The Chicago Rat Shifter—Michael La Ronn —Michael La RonnDes Moines, Iowa Des Moines, IowaAugust 15, 2022 August 15, 2022